Privacy Notices - Pre-application advice Privacy Notice

You need to be aware of this Privacy Notice if you are applying for pre-application advice.

A Privacy Notice is a statement issued by an organisation which explains how personal and confidential data about individuals is collected, used and shared.
 

Swindon Borough Council will act as a “Data Controller” for any personal data that you provide to us. We will ensure that the data given to us is processed in line with our Data Protection Act 2018 (DPA 18) and the EU General Data Protection Regulations. (GDPR).

Personal data relates to a living individual who can be identified from that data. Identification can be by the information alone or in conjunction with any other information in the data controller’s possession or likely to come into such possession. The processing of data is governed by the General Data Protection Regulation 2016/679 (the “GDPR”).

Your information will be used to administer requests for pre-application advice and determine their outcomes.

Requests for pre-application advice will not be subject to any publicity and will remain private and confidential. However, we may be obliged to release documents if we receive a Freedom of Information (FOI) request.

Where we can, we will only collect and use personal information if we need it to deliver a service or meet a requirement.
If we do not need personal information, we will either, keep you anonymous if we already have it for something else, or we will not ask you for it. For example, in a survey, we may not need your contact details we will only collect your survey responses.

If we use your personal information for research and analysis, we will always keep you anonymous or use a different name unless you have explicitly agreed that your personal information can be used for that research.

We do not sell your personal information to anyone else.  
 

We will do what we can to make sure we hold records about you (on paper and electronically) in a secure way, and we will only make them available to those who have a right to see them.

Examples of our security include:

• encryption, meaning that information is hidden so that it cannot be read without special knowledge (such as a password). This is done with a secret code, or what is called a 'cypher'. The hidden information is said to then be 'encrypted'.
• pseudonymisation, meaning that we will use a different name so we can hide parts of your personal information from view. This means that someone outside of the Council could work on your information for us without ever knowing it was yours.
• controlling access to systems and networks allows us to stop people who are not allowed to view your personal information from getting access to it
• training for our staff allows us to make them aware of how to handle information and how and when to report when something goes wrong
• regular testing of our technology and ways of working including keeping up to date on the latest security updates (commonly called patches).

We will only retain these for as long as necessary following a decision being made on a pre-application request for advice.

We would normally expect to share what we record about you with you whenever we assess your needs or provide you with services.

However, you also have the right to ask for a copy of all the information we have about you and the services you receive from us. When we receive a request from you in writing, we must give you access to everything we have recorded about you, however, we cannot let you see any parts of your records that contain: 

• confidential information about other people
• data a professional thinks will cause serious harm to you or someone else’s physical or mental wellbeing; or
• if we think that giving you the information may stop us from preventing or detecting a crime.

This applies to personal information that is in both paper and electronic records. If you ask us, we will also let others see your record (except if one of the points above applies).

If you cannot ask for your records in writing, we will make sure there are other ways that you can.

If you have any queries about access to your information contact DataProtection@Swindon.gov.uk.
 

In the event that you wish to complain about the way that your personal data has been handled by Swindon Borough Council, you should write to the Data Protection Officer and clearly outline your case. Your complaint will then be investigated in accordance with our customer complaint procedure.

You are under no statutory obligation to provide personal data to Swindon Borough Council. However, if you do not provide the data, we may not be able to process your application properly or at all.

A yearly audit will take place on personal data to ensure that we remain legally compliant in accordance with current data protection legislation.

You are viewing the Privacy Notice for pre-application advice.

Read the main Privacy Notice